Urgent Server Updates

Late this evening, the server administrators in IT will be performing some urgent updates and upgrades to the Web server. During that process, we will be turning off the current version of the website, and automatically directing visitors to a backup copy of the site. Any changes you make to the site today will be temporarily lost until the maintenance is completed. If you need any urgent changes made to the site during this maintenance window, please let us know by emailing webmaster@umw.edu. If you are a content manager, you should have received an email message with more information about these upgrades in your email. … [Read more...]

Update Your Faculty Profile Photo

Late last year, we announced a new method of displaying and managing faculty bios and profiles. Now, we are happy to announce that we've added some new features to those profiles. In addition to being able to manage all of the data you could in the previous version, you can now manage your own photograph, and you have more control over your video widget. If you would like to add a photo (or replace your existing photo), you can do so by following these instructions: If you have permission to upload photos somewhere on the UMW website (or UMWBlogs): Login to the website using your Banner/Email credentials Edit your profile In another window or tab, login to your site or blog. Then, go to Media -> Add New and upload your photograph. Once it's uploaded, you may need to click "Show" or "Edit" in order to view the details of the photo. While viewing the details, select the "File URL" and press Ctrl+C (or Cmd+C on a Mac) on your keyboard to copy that address. Go back to your … [Read more...]

Update Your New Online Faculty Bio

Teaching Faculty at UMW may now take control of their online biography posted on the UMW Website. Using the WordPress profiles, faculty can add their blog feeds, Twitter feeds, YouTube videos, and a host of other content. In addition, any news releases written about that faculty member will automatically aggregate to their bio. All data is taken from Banner web services, so faculty course listings, department affiliations, contact info is all automatically rendered to the page! Are you a department web administrator? You can now generate an automatic listing of current teaching faculty in your department. Here is how > We invite all teaching faculty at UMW to login to http://www.umw.edu/faculty/wp-admin/profile.php and customize your faculty personal page today. This is a great way to create an online aggregation of your scholarly work, and your day-to-day commentary within the online space. It's a great showcase for you, and for UMW. Individual faculty data managed … [Read more...]

Building Top Bar Navigation For Your Site

Did you know you are not locked into using only the side links on your site? Lots of folks have been learning how to add a navigation bar to the top. We have put together a tutorial to enable you to do this on your own. Just know that a top navigation bar requires that you be more thoughtful about the length of your links and the number of links. Top bar navigation has to fit within the page, unlike a sidebar that can scroll down for a long time. If you think you'd like to explore using top bar navigation, either in conjunction with a sidebar or in addition to it, this is the tutorial for you!  … [Read more...]

Website Logins Disabled for Maintenance, July 13-14, 2012

Due to systems maintenance, the UMW Website Wordpress logins (NOT UMW Blogs) will be disabled on Friday, July 13 and Saturday, July 14. The website will remain live during this time. Information Technologies will be performing network maintenance. The UMW Web team will be upgrading to the latest WordPress version and updating plugins. We will notify you of the changes once they are complete, and let you know when you can login again. Meanwhile, if you anticipate having to make changes to your site, please complete them by 8:00 am on Friday, July 13. … [Read more...]

What We Did Today: WordPress Updates

As you know, logins were disabled this morning to allow us to perform updates to Wordpress. These were tested in our staging environment, but please let us know if you perceive any weirdness in your sites. Here is what we updated: Updated WordPress from 3.3.1 to 3.3.2 Updated Plugins Akismet – from 2.5.5 to 2.5.6 Business Hours – from 1.2 to 1.3.2 BWP Google XML Sitemaps – from 1.1.6 to 1.2.1 CMS Tree Page View – from 0.8.4 to 0.8.11 Feedburner Email Widget – from 1.1.5 to 1.1.6 Genesis Nav Menu Amplified – from 1.0 to 1.0.1 Gravity Forms – from 1.6.2 to 1.6.3.3.4 Gravity Forms + Custom Post Types – from 3 to 3.0.1 Image Widget – from 3.2.11 to 3.3.3 Jetpack by WordPress.com – from 1.2.2 to 1.3 MCE Table Buttons – from 1.0.4 to 1.5 Network Privacy – from 0.1.1 to 0.1.2 Page Links To – from 2.6 to 2.7.1 Post Expirator – from 1.5.1 to 1.5.3 TubePress – from 2.2.9 to 2.4.2 Types – Complete Solution for Custom Fields and Types – from 0.9.4.2 to … [Read more...]

How Much Do You Know About WordPress Roles and Permissions?

As a Wordpress site administrator, you can add users and assign them different permission levels. These permission levels get pretty granular. For instance, you may want some folks to draft things, but have them reviewed before publishing them. You may want to share site administration with another person (always a good idea), or allow other people broader privileges to edit other's content or upload files. The Wordpress.org codex has a very detailed breakdown of what all of these user roles mean. Bookmark this site as a reference for when you assign permissions to different people to edit your sites. http://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities Happy Wordpress! … [Read more...]

New Tutorial on Managing the Users on your Site

Did you know that you can add users on your site yourself, without the intrusion of the system administrator or webmaster? Did you also know that everyone in your department is automatically an "Author" on your site? To find out about what all this means, plus how to use Wordpress user management tools in UMW.EDU, visit the new tutorial video and instructions > … [Read more...]

Division Policy Manuals Live on Web Site

You may not get excited about this kind of thing, but I'm enough of a geek to think it's the bees knees! Now, each major division has a "policies" page that loads directly from an XML feed from BoardDocs. Translation: Our UMW Policies Manual is shaping up, and the days of disjointed online policies are OVER. Check out these pages: President: http://president.umw.edu/policies Provost: http://provost.umw.edu/policies Administration and Finance: http://adminfinance.umw.edu/policies Advancement: http://advancement.umw.edu/policies Student Affairs: http://students.umw.edu/policies Foundation: http://foundation.umw.edu/policies … [Read more...]

New Feature: Advisories and Announcements on UMW Websites!

Thanks to the genius of  our fearless Webmaster, Curtiss Grymala, we've got ways to post announcements and last-minute advisories on your UMW Web site. For more information on these new powerful features, visit our new tutorials> … [Read more...]